Spoilers DC TV Arrow/Flash Universe Crossover Discussion

I would love to see them bring in the other DC shows into the Arrowverse multiverse. I know we wouldn't be able to get full on story crossovers with the CW shows and the others, but I think it would be fun if they could at least bring the Arrowverse actors over to Gotham or Powerless as that universe's versions of the characters.
Honestly trying to collapse all of the shows into one universe would just be to complicated of a mess. Collapsing the universes would basically require rewritting the entire history of the shows and universes, and at this point I'd hate to see everything start over from scratch. I wouldn't mind seeing the Supergirl characters pulled over into Earth-1 if it ended before the others or the vice versa if it outlasted the Earth-1 shows, but I would prefer they leave their histories and everything in tact. That way we could still get more regular appearances from them, but wouldn't lose anything in the process.

 

I don't see how it would be costly to get clearances given that they're all DC/Warner Properties, with the possible exception of Gotham that is, but even then I imagine if Fox wants to continue with the show it would help to stay in nice with TPTB. it may also lead to free advertising. By the way thanks for the link .

Whilst I admit there are certain story possibilities that might be fun to explore with Earth's-1 & 38 remaining separate - a few pages back I suggested a 'Prisoner of Zenda' style Supergirl episode involving Earth-1 Oliver posing as Earth-38 Oliver who's still a sex-obsessed douche on Supergirl's Earth, and there would definitely be some comedy gold to be had from Diggle visiting the alien bar (not to mention Cisco, Felicity or Ray drawing comparisons with the Mos Eisley Cantina) - I would still prefer those two universes to merge.
You listed above a number of ways that the two can be linked whilst being separate, but to me it's still contrived. It's way simpler if you want the characters to interact if they can just walk down the road, instead of walk down the road and have to use some contrived device or metahuman as well to do so. And the Crisis doesn't even have to be the mechanism to pull off this merger. You've got Barry who could unintentionally do it through time travel. Then there's the Spear of Destiny which can apparently alter reality. If I'm not mistaken wasn't the Philosopher's Stone also capable of this kind of thing? And lets not forget that it has caused one or two problems such as Linda Carter not being made president on Earth-1, because the producers thought people would get confused.

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Though for what it's worth I suspect an ulterior motive relating to the final scene of episode 3 of Supergirl was also a factor with the President's glowing eyes.

I'll have to research this one a little better. I only bought a handful of All Star Squadron comics in the early '80s and I'm obviously way too young to have read 'The Flash of 2 Earths' though I imagine it's in a TPB .

 

For one thing, actors get paid residuals for reuse of footage that they're in. The more actors whose faces they showed, the more money they'd have to dish out. For another, WB isn't always the exclusive production partner in these things. The reason it was hard to arrange the Supergirl/Flash crossover last season is because the networks had to negotiate certain rights and financial matters between them. I'm sure the same would go for getting clearance to use footage from a FOX or NBC show on a CW show. After all, those networks are competitors. Warner Bros. might be happy to tie the shows together, but they aren't the only ones with a say in the decision, and the networks might be more reluctant to help out the competition without getting something in return. As for movie footage, the movie and TV divisions of WB are separate companies, despite being owned by the same conglomerate. They aren't automatically on the same page; in fact, they seem quite disconnected and often have conflicting interests.

It's not just about individual story possibilities, it's about the character and history of the separate worlds, which is what makes alternate realities interesting. I like the contrast between a world that's still getting used to the novelty of metahumans and aliens and a world that's had a substantial alien presence shaping it for over a dozen years. It gives them distinct cultures and attitudes and allows for quite different story possibilities. For instance, "Invasion!" could never have happened on Earth-38; an alien incursion would not have been the catalyst for an unprecedented team-up of heroes, because the DEO would already have been in place to deal with such things, and Superman's probably already dealt with a number of alien invasions all by himself. And Supergirl's stories this season using alien immigration and amnesty as real-world allegory obviously couldn't be told on a world that's had very little contact with aliens.

It would be enormously more contrived to rewrite the entire histories and backstories of the worlds and their characters in order to arbitrarily force them together. Besides, the multiverse has been part of the DC narrative (and particularly The Flash) for most of the past 55 years. So including stories about the multiverse is no more contrived within the context of a DC show than including stories about the Speed Force or Lazarus Pits or aliens with levitation and heat vision. Or, for that matter, masked vigilantes who routinely break the law and even kill people while the authorities look the other way and treat them as "auxiliary law enforcement." The entire concept of superheroes is contrived.

As for simple, it'd be simpler for Bruce Wayne to spend his billions funding anti-crime programs and domain awareness and infrastructure repair and social services, rather than trying to fight crime by punching criminals one at a time. It's not about what's simple, it's about what makes for interesting stories. Parallel realities interacting and exploring the differences between their histories and cultures is interesting. It's one of the many science fiction tropes that superhero comics have wholeheartedly embraced, and I don't see the value of getting rid of it, any more than getting rid of time travel or telepathy or aliens would be a good idea.

I don't see that as a problem. It's just an idea they tossed out and decided not to go with because it wasn't practical. That's how creativity works -- you consider a bunch of ideas, use the ones that work, and reject the ones that don't. It's not a breakdown of the process if a single idea doesn't pan out, because it's just one of many that are tried out in the course of figuring out what works. It just got more attention in the press because it involved a celebrity. But it would've just been a cameo scene in one episode, so it wasn't that big a deal. There's a big difference between what gets a lot of press and what's actually important.

 

^I would use A*S for the acronym, as I do for All-Star Superman.

 

ASQ has been used.

 

That's okay, I'm British, we say 'arse' so there's no problem with ASS as an acronym for us .

 

This might seem off-topic, but I was once again reminded last night of just how awesome, on the whole, the DCW's costume design is after Colleen Atwood's costuming skills and design expertise earned Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them the Potterverse's first Oscar, and I think it's a major coup to have her involved given how busy she is in general and the sheer width and breadth of the projects she's worked on.

 

I really love her Flash and Supergirl costume designs. Especially the latter. Whoever thought a cheerleader outfit with a cape could look so functional and elegant?

 

Sorry I am late to the Crisis discussion.

A couple thoughts...

I thik some of us who want to see the Crisis are in no way expecting all DC properties to be a part of it -- just the Berlanti multiverse. And really, our expectation would be like Invasion -- extremely small scale version. We'd keep some of the earths, like Earth 2, 3 & 19.

The whole DC multiverse got started so they could keep the "reality" of the original Flash & Green Lantern as well as Superman , WW & Batman, and explain why there are 2 versions of some heroes, and newer versions of others.

While I loved the minis series (especially the George Perez art), the aftermath, for the most part was indeed a mess and a mistake.

Some consolidation would've been nice, bt we were OK with earth 2 & Earth 3 being separate.


One of the main reasons Supergirl is separate is due to the network differences (CW & CBS). If it was all on the same network, I think they would've actually appreciated it together (they way they might connect CSI or on NBC the Chicago different series). But I think after ratings weren't so super in the first month, they allowed for the Flash crossover to see if it might help ratings.

We "need" Supergirl on Earth 1, so we can have a Justice League (like there was a Justice Society in WW2/Comic Earth 2). Supergirl fulfills both of Superman and Wonder Woman's role.

At some point in the near future, I see Arrow being cancelled. Having Supergirl in the same earth can easily transfer some secondary characters to other shows. (I can see Diggle being a new head/agent of the DEO).

Also, we can easily hand wave the "no superheroes before" as more like Superman acted mostly on the East Coast, and Supergirl down in California,while Star City & Central City or north of there, and didn't really see any action before. Flashpoint has already trangenderized Diggle's child...some lines of dialogue, but not changed Arrow in any fundemental way.

There's not a whole lot in previous shows where anyone other tan the most OCD fans would care.

I know Christopher absolutely loathes the idea. But I don't think he's in the majority, or "right" about t.

 

This is unequivocally false.

The "main" reason that Supergirl doesn't exist on the same Earth as Arrow, Flash, etc. is SUPERMAN. The fact that the character does not and cannot exist on Earth-1 without some major retconning made it impossible for Supergirl to be set on Earth-1 because the existence of Superman was 'baked into' its very premise from the start (as confirmed by Greg Berlanti, Ali Adler, and even Andrew Kreisberg, who didn't actually come onto the series until after it was created),as there was never even any consideration of not having Superman existing as part of the mythological backstory for Supergirl as a television series.

IOW, Berlanti and Adler had no interest in not having Superman exist as part of Supergirl's world, which immediately disqualified the characters of the show from existing on Earth-1, and is not something that would've changed even if The CW had initially picked up the series.

 

But there's really no need to bring Supergirl into Earth-1 to do any of this, with the tech and Vibe powers, it takes like 5 second to get from Earth to Earth, so bringing them together would pointlessly complicate things.

 

I almost never agree with Christopher, nor can I speak to the question of "the majority", but in this case I think he is correct, insofar as keeping them separate makes it much easier to have a richer variety of stories and options, given the trivial nature of interdimensional travel in the DVTV universe.

 

I'd like to see it happen to and for many of the reasons you state (I assume the Earth 38 versions of Batman & Suoerman are included in this to?) but DigificWriter's explanation is to my knowledge the correct one.

As you say this is why Supergirl was initially set on its own Earth. I imagine that this is a legacy of the early days of Arrow when they envisaged there wouldn't be any spin-offs, still less spin-offs featuring super-powered characters. The impression I got from one of the extras on the Arrow season 1 box set was when they started out with Arrow was they were taking a leaf out of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy and make a 'relatively grounded' superhero show. Indeed I wonder if originally they might even have intended to set it on the same Earth as The Dark Knight Trilogy (quickly dispelled by a couple of casting choices in seasons 1 and 2 when the actors who played Lau and Gamble from The Dark Knight both appeared). If they realised they were going to have time travel, meta humans and alien invasions (not to mention magic when NBC's Constantine was retroactively incorporated into the Arrowverse) from the get-go they may well have set Supergirl on Earth 1. Though I could imagine if Berlanti and co wanted to create a Superman show they could set it on Earth 1, make him native to that universe and have him yet to make their public debut.

Not really. It's still much simpler to have them all inhabit a single world so long as you find a way to deal with the legacy of the first two seasons of Arrow (see my note above) that indicate Superman et al didn't exist there. And there's one of a number of universe-altering reality events that could do that such as Flashpoint, Crisis or perhaps using the reassembled Spear of Destiny. Hell perhaps Mzyzptlk could do it.

I like to think I'm one of the 'majority' on this, not saying I am though. Maybe we should add a poll to see home many would like Earths 1 & 38 to merge? How do you go about creating polls?

 

Personally, I agree that it would be a bad and entirely unnecessary idea to merge all the Earth's.

 

WHo the heck here is advocating for merging ALL the earths???? Just TWO earths. A scaled down Crisis (just like the much scaled down Invasion! ) could accomplish this with little muss & fuss. It wouldn't change much of the Arrow verse or how people feel about past continuity, just like FLashpoint didn't destroy Arrow's history, despite the transgenderism of Diggle's child,

 

I just don't see the point of it, especially with how easy it is for our characters to jump universes. Both E1 and E38 are distinct, unique entities (The mutual and very recognizable Vancouver city-scape and rooftops notwithstanding) and I believe they would would both stand to lose more than they would gain from pointlessly merging them into a homogenous whole.

ETA: And it could also be potentially very confusing to casual viewers, who could potentially tune out as a result.

 

The only believable way to 'condense' E1 and E38 together would be for ALL of the inhabitants of the latter to be stranded on the former because a catastrophe destroyed it; otherwise, you'd be trying to retcon so much history that you'd render things a convoluted mess that would basically make 20 seasons' worth of material pointless.

 

Wouldn't you be able to explain Superman on E1 by just adding a flashback on Arrow saying Superman is missing for (say) 6 months now, so they have no expectation of Superman helping them. Now he returns. Then Ollie says he can take care of his own city, thank you.